Thursday, December 30

My reason for my seasons

"I have become a fool; you forced it on me. I ought to have been recommended by you, since I am in no way inferior to the "super-apostles," even though I am nothing." (2Co 12:11 HCSB)

It just gave God’s word to the seasonal theme of this time; not just the unemployment or the move to a different city or even the loss of someone that I truly loved but also the events that have carried me from that moment in October 2004 until now……bits and pieces of the work that He began way back in February 2004 until today that I thought were seasonal changes of my journey. As I sit here and stir the campfire in the dark echoes of the night, listening to the nocturnal creatures of its inky blackness, I have realized that there has been only one season since the end of the cold winter that began that February day. It has been a long journey and there are some who would say that I am no closer to the ‘goal’ than I was that October day in Chicago. Others would say I’ve become a ‘burden’ to the cause. Some will say I’m about as ‘godly’ as a addict or as ‘saved’ as a person drowning. Others, that quiet majority, have said that God is amazing in what He has done in my life, to this point, and the direction they perceive Him to be taking me on.

It has not been easy; this journey in the deepest heat of the summer past. It would seem for the majority of the trip so far, it has been through swamp and murky bogs….attacked by mosquitoes and pursued by bears. Always on the defensive, always working on wounds and new hurts and old recurring nightmares, grasping at peace and running to try and capture joy. Pursuing what I perceived God to be only to find that He was nothing like what I had thought. Seeking that direction to achieve the purpose He has set within my bones, that desire that seems to ebb and flow with the beating of my heart only to feel mislead by the directions and opinions of those who have come into my life. I have proclaimed the purpose He has called me to and been laughed at…..told to stop being foolish and do the ‘responsible’ thing. In several ways, by several people, for several different reasons.

I have been defensive in some of this season; fighting the perception of those both right and wrong, those who are lovers and haters and those who truly want what God is doing in my life, around me and through each of us. I have been offensive; fighting for the development of the purpose, seeking the ‘in’ to the ‘inner sanctuary’ though all the doors seem locked. I have argued, cajoled and calmly interjected. I have written, I have preached and I have volunteered. I have experienced the fullness of many opportunities and shied away from others. It has been a long, tiring and unrealized journey through this season.

And it boils down to what a friend said to me that I believe these verses speak from God’s own mouth. “I should…be…act…think…” has to be replaced with “God is” and that is enough. No longer, from the moment of my salvation can I expect myself to achieve, but (and he said this was from a seminar he went to) I have to consistently put myself in situations where if God doesn’t show, He’ll look foolish. In the absence of our own abilities and skills, where there is no rhythm or reason to the success of the struggle, the goal or the dream….in that the only thought that can be given is that God has done the work. We are merely the putty in His hands, shaped and fired to meet the requirements of the vessel for the Holy Spirit to fill.

I presented myself to the Church as a candidate of calling; there are those who have seen it and those who have not. There are those who, checking off the list of ‘requirements’ have forgotten the one sole requirement God has given to them…to disciple and further God’s cause in the call. The rejection of the Church has been a damaging wound to my life, but I have realized there was never a ‘Church-requirement’ of approval in the things that God has purposed me to do. Only my obedience and movement towards Him.

There are those who say I’m foolish to still dream, to still question whether or not God has called me to go into fulltime ministry……. If I am foolish for the impossibilities of God, then so be it.

So, now as the unemployment runs out and still no job on the horizon…..as the last of the money is poured into my gas tank for fueling the car…..and I face the coming New Year without apparent prospects, I wonder and trust in the provision of God for me and my family. I am awed by the questioning of my heart to pursue His big, audacious and hairy dreams for me or to sulk into a job to ‘just get by’ if I can.

As a pastor challenged his readers in an blog he wrote about “Daring to pray this prayer,” I can only bow my head in supplication and raise my hands in adoration…….and pray this prayer for 2011. For this is what God has taught me in the theme of this season…..He will have me where He wants me to be.

"Two things I ask from you; do not refuse me before I die: Remove falsehood and lies far from me; do not give me poverty or riches, feed me with my allotted portion of bread, lest I become satisfied and act deceptively and say, "Who is the LORD?" Or lest I become poor and steal and demean the name of my God." Proverbs 30:7-9.

It is my only resolution for 2011. What is yours?

Friday, December 10

Grasshoppers in the land of Nephilims

‎"To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and we must have seemed the same to them." Numbers 14:32b HASB

Men’s Fraternity, the Men’s ministry from Robert Lewis, broached the subject of life with the metaphor of a football game; the first and second halves and how to live a great adventure successfully in both. It is Lewis’ contention that men tend to live one or the other ‘well’ and looks into the Old Testament book of Numbers to find a biblical character who has lived it well in both halves to win the game of life.

Caleb, which means “dog” in Hebrew, but in Akkadian (an extinct Semitic language, part of the greater Afro-asiatic language family, that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia) it means “Loyal vassal of the King.” Lewis tells us that Caleb is a ‘half-breed,’ either by birth or adoption, because his father is Jephunneh the Kenizzite (Joshua 14:6). Kenaz, the ancestor who the Kenizzite people is traced, was the son of Eliphaz (eldest son of Esau) and one of the twelve rulers of Edom. The people were not Israelite, and by the patriarch’s history with Isaac (Israel), the Kenizzites were most likely enemies of the Israelite nation…it is known that they lived in the land of Canaan, the land which God had given to the Jewish people. Yet Caleb is becomes an example to God’s people. He advocates with Joshua, another one of the twelve spies sent into the Promised Land, that the people should take the land given to them by God, that the abundance and wealth can be theirs despite the inhabitants. They are almost stoned.

It is that phrase that is left at the end of that tale, given by the ten other dissenters from the encouragement of the two spies that hit me between the eyes today as I left the study. And it was one of the men there that caused it to ‘stick in my craw’ as I stumped down the stairs into the snowy ‘wonderland’ that Michigan is today. “Grasshoppers among Nephilims” Insects among giants.

The man in the group, younger than I by probably ten years, the head of a young family said that he respected me and the testimony I had, the fact that I was willing and full of a passion to mentor other men and pursue God even in the darkness. I was stunned, and as I thought of the biblical verses that we studied Caleb in today during the Fraternity, I keep coming across the woeful attitude of the ten…..grasshoppers among giants.

I am surrounded by good and bad Nephilims (in relation to the size) and the ‘good giants’ that I know don’t even know how small I am….and honestly, even with the good ones, I’d like to keep it that way. Usually when I bring notice to my size, I’m trampled quickly.

Be it the giant of Acute Depression, Financial failures, Unemployment, Wounded Fatherhood, Desperate Manhood….to name a few of the giants that haunt my landscape, I am but a tiny insect….unnoticed until I begin to disrupt the living of those giants and then I become a pest to be destroyed by the ruler of that land…beaten by the voices that echo the fears in my head before I can even sit in wonder at the bounty of the Promise that God has set before me……

Wow……

In my younger days, I lived with a Joshua….even though I didn’t know it at the time, for the giants were dominating even then and I have watched others in my life react like the ten…scared and in denial of what God has given (for I have lived life like them too). He was and is a powerful man, both in the spiritual journey God has taken him on and in the world, my brother Larry J Hutson. His wife and he are missionaries with the Navigators over in Germany, ministering to the troops of the Air Force that come through the base there. He is a Joshua, who came back from the spying expedition into the land of Canaan with the overwhelming report of “Conquer, it is ours” and he is the one who leads others into the Promised land. But I digress. With the holiday season upon us, I tend to be a bit reflective. I realize now that my brother wasn’t the Nephilim I thought he was in my younger days, but rather a Joshua who would’ve contributed so much more to my life than he was allowed.

The Father of Lies will get you every time.

Caleb, a young man, points his compass to the “north star” that God is and follows through with a ‘raw faith’ to claim the ‘promise life’, according to Lewis and in the ‘older days’ some 40 years later, demands the right to seize the ‘high ground’ with a ‘fresh faith’ rather than settle in the lower lands. You really have to read the story of Caleb in Numbers and Joshua to understand the parts of his life that Lewis talks of and go through the third year of Men’s Fraternity to see how it fits into a man’s journey…..but Caleb influences another generation by his life, and influences us as well.

Caleb and Joshua, enticed and excited by the land of Promise that God has shown them aren’t confused or frightened by the giants that stomp through the land. They are consumed, fully surrendered to the future, desperate to begin the claiming of what God had set aside for the people of Israel. It would take them many years to realize that, but they stayed committed. Forty years later, Caleb takes the high ground of Hebron and dwells there with his clan…..inspiring another to defy the giants of their life later.

As I look across the river Jordan into the Promise that God has set before me, being told by some I’m nothing more than a grasshopper facing the giants who shall surely finish me off like a pest, do I step into the process of being a Caleb…..empowered and enthused with God’s work that was begun in me and continues on the other side of this place or do I whine like the other ten and say they simply are too big and the land too harsh for me to continue.

Dare I be a grasshopper…….protected and empowered by the might of a giant God?!?!

Tuesday, December 7

Want

“People cannot live without hope. Everyone hopes for something; most people hope for things they can see, or, at least, have seen.” T. M. Moore writes. “ - a good marriage, a better job, more material possessions, a successful retirement, and so forth.”

I hope for a job, but not just any job. I want to provide for my family, but not just the material things. I can remember back when my children would ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhhh’ over the catalogs of toys that leaped out to them from the glossy pages. Christmas was filled with the joyful sounds of carols and music as people greeted each other with “Merry Christmas” amid rushing to Christmas pageants and plays…..and the “I need this” or “I want that” from the buried heads of my young ones. They couldn’t understand why, when they asked Dad what he wanted that ‘anything you make’ was more desirable than the latest “G.I. Joe” or “horsey.” What they ‘hoped’ for under the tree on Christmas morning would be a mixture of what they needed (clothes, etc.) and what they wanted (toys, electronic gadgets). I was the same way as a child, wanting the latest gadget or game to satisfy me.

This year, they have grown up a lot and understand that such gifting isn’t a necessary thing to celebrate the season, or the Christian reason behind the celebration. Oh, they have thrown out their ‘wants;’ a laptop, an IPOD touch and an Xbox….along with some ‘practical’ things like winter pjs and clothes. But they understand that there are more beneficial and worthy wants; a home, food, clothing and each other.

As I sat here, thinking about the needs of some friends that I’ve stepped forward to meet, the things I’ve done in the quiet of my community that hasn’t met the eyes of others (and never will), and the needs of a few organizations like www.homefronthugs.com and www.avets.org that are hoping for some donations to send our deployed troops some home loving during this holiday season they are once again (in most cases) away from home, I was hit by the realization of what we should really be intensely wanting and hoping for this Christmas celebration……and how often, in the discussions of the Church during this time, such is ignored.

Oh, we speak about the Christmas story in our pews and defend the use of “Merry Christmas” in advertisements and greetings. We put on elaborate plays or simple skits to bring in the visual learners in the crowds. Most church attendance swells during this time, or at least on the day of, as a country and a world come together to recognize the universal time of giving. Some of us have the additional ‘joy’ or ‘burden’ (depending on how you view it) of having a winter ‘wonderland’ of snow to help us in the memory department……though I don’t think Jesus and His family had to contend with snow in Bethlehem (so I don’t know why I have to…..). We have office parties with ‘secret Santas’ and family gatherings for gift giving with bountiful meals. We are lighter in the pocketbook during this time; not only for the family but reaching out to those who are struggling through this time. We smile as we ask our family, friends and co-workers what they ‘want’ for Christmas and calculate it in our head as to where and how much such a gift is…..balanced against the joy and pleasure of the smile that comes from obtainment….

I wonder what the ‘wants’ were in the beginning…..as shepherds lay watching their sheep and a world slept in a midnight clear. As the King was born in simple fare, being born into this world to the bleating of sheep and the chomp of the camels, I wonder what the dreams that danced ‘like sugar plums’ in the heads of the young ones and the practical wants of their parents. Was the wants of the Magi who travelled to ‘yon distant star’ more practical as well, seeking why a star rose in that spot or less ‘worldly’ in its scope? Israel was under the bondage of Rome, its national life dictated by the demands of a distant government with iron fists.

There were those, for sure, to prayed each night that the promised Messiah would come blazing across the early morning sky with a legion or two of Angelic host to bring the mighty Roman Empire to its knees like was done in the olden days to Egypt. The want for a release and dismantling of the yoke of slavery and oppression that dominated their lives even as they celebrated the Passover and other Jewish remembrances, surely these things were never far from the minds of those who thought them…..and not just for a certain season or day.

They wanted what something that they could handle, touch or use to wipe out the things that they had to deal with in this world. A Messiah to lead them to defeat their overseers, as we hope for the fulfillment of wants for a good marriage, job, home and other such things. We want what we can handle, to acknowledge that we are loved, cherished or at least ‘tolerated.’

In today’s economy, I know there are those who want to break the yoke of unemployment and the unwelcomed reliance upon the ‘handouts’ of the government even as there are those who want to rest of the laurels of others. There are those who resent those on unemployment insurance payments, some that are entering their second year. As Christians, we hope for that which we cannot see with our eyes or grasp with our hands. We hope in an eternal perspective for that which has been promised; a glory that defies even our more elaborate and glorious dreams of what we want on this earth. In this world, our wants are piety, self-serving and damaging layers of protection that serves as a salve between the pain of living with other human beings. The Israelites felt it back then, Christ paid the ultimate price for it, and we have learned nothing in the practice of celebrating the birth of our King in the years since.

What we should want every year under the tree that most of us put up in the living rooms, basements or lounges of our palatial homes (in the standards of the rest of the world) is nothing more than the simple picture of the glory that await us when the birthday boy returns…..a gift that far outweighs anything in this world and one that we, the celebrants of the birthday boy’s birth, could ill-afford to pay. But we are guided by lesser hopes, which are the wants of this world, and by the deception of the needs that aren’t really needs when they cannot be filled. We seek satisfaction in lesser things that cannot satisfy, demanding obedience and ‘improvement’ from those who we perceive are less engaged in the culture war of want and need.

That is what I want this Christmas; not presents for the kids, nor for myself. I have been blessed with more than I ever deserve by those who now seem to believe that their gifts were wasted on me. I don’t need the approval of those friends, though understanding would be a garnish on the tree that would shine in the dark. I don’t desire sympathy or pity from them either, for such offerings are merely a covering of their own insecurity over what they are judging me about. I want the hope secured that comes from the moment in time that began on a midnight clear in the little town of Bethlehem in a manger filled with swaddling clothes and the baby that lay within. That hope that was secured in the moment thirty-three years later upon a cross of wooden pain and torment. A hope that lies in my heart regardless of what my friends claim to know is right and what I believe is true. A hope that will be born out in my life for His glory, regardless of the circumstances.

Do you have this hope?